Fear
by dragonwings948
Summary: The Doctor tries to avoid addressing the fact that he almost killed Clara earlier that day. The real reason why, Clara finds, is a deeply rooted fear that he's carried with him for a long time. One-shot taking place after The Witch's Familiar.


_I woke up in a dark enclosed space. My arms and legs felt stiff, but when I tried to move them, nothing happened. My heart began to beat harder, faster. I couldn't see anything._

 _And then in a moment, somehow, it all became clear._

 _"No," I whispered to myself. It couldn't be happening again._

 _"NO!" A robotic voice echoed me, sounding somewhat distant, like it was outside of the casing I was trapped in._

 _Suddenly I could see. Grey walls surrounded me, tinged blue through the Dalek eyestalk. As I turned in a slow spin, I noticed that the room had no doors. Yet, after I had turned a full circle, someone was waiting for me._

 _"Doctor!" I exclaimed. If anyone could get me out of here, he could._

 _My voice sounded amplified and mechanical through the Dalek. "DOCTOR!" My heart sank._

 _Pure disgust coloured the Doctor's features, his mouth turned down in a deep frown and his nostrils flared. He held some sort of Dalek weapon in his right hand, his finger already resting on the trigger._

 _"Where's Clara?" he asked, his voice surprisingly tranquil for how tense he looked. But I knew him, and I knew this. It was just the calm before the wrath of the Oncoming Storm._

 _"It's me! I'm Clara! I'm right here!" But my voice was swallowed up a moment later and my words were twisted to say the only thing a Dalek could understand from my cries: "I AM A DALEK! I AM A DALEK!"_

 _The Doctor stared straight at the Dalek's eyestalk, straight at me. Fierce anger burned in the Doctor's eyes like I had never seen. His knuckles began to turn white as he clutched the gun. He couldn't hear me. He couldn't see me. All he saw was a Dalek._

 _I strained my entire body against the metal casing around me, but nothing budged. Was there even a way for me to ever get out of here?_

 _"Doctor!" I yelled at the top of my lungs, but the Dalek's robotic voice only covered it up with its screech of "DOCTOR!"_

 _"Give me one reason why I should let you live," the Doctor growled, his eyebrows furrowing deep lines into his forehead._

 _Tears stung my eyes. It was hopeless._

 _"Because I'm your friend," I choked out. "Because I'm Clara Oswald." The Dalek's voice softened in response to mine. "Because I am your enemy. Because I am a Dalek."_

 _The Doctor's jaw tensed. He raised the gun and pointed it straight at me._

 _"No!" I yelled, tears flowing freely down my cheeks. "No, Doctor, please!"_

 _"NO!" my Dalek voice shrieked. "EXTERMINATE!"_

 _"No!"_ _I struggled, trying to free my arms and legs, but the space was just too small._

 _"EXTERMINATE!"_

 _The gun began to glow blue in the Doctor's hand. "No," he said, the staccato syllable slicing through the air like a knife. "Not this time. Not ever again."_

 _"No!"_

 _"NO!" the Dalek wailed._

 _He pulled the trigger, and my world exploded in a flash of blue._

* * *

I shot up in bed, blinking to allow my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The room brightened ever so slightly, and the back of my mind told me it was the TARDIS sensing that I was awake. I gripped the bed sheets in my hands and sighed, attempting to calm my racing heart. A hiccup pushed itself from my throat, and a strangled sob followed. I swiped my hand across my eyes and felt moisture underneath my fingertips.

With a shuddering sigh, I pulled my comforter around me and leaned my back against the headboard. My head weighed on my shoulders like it was a hundred pounds, though whether that was from falling twice or the lack of sleep, I didn't know.

The thought of trying to fall asleep again made me shudder.

I crawled out of bed and pushed my slippers onto my feet. With a sniff and another attempt to wipe away the rest of my tears, I padded across my room and opened the door to the dark TARDIS corridor. As soon as I placed one foot on the metal floor, a soft orange glow began to emanate from the ceiling and followed me as I walked the short distance to the kitchen.

The door slid open on its own and bright light flooded from inside. I squinted and shuffled in, blinking hard and holding out my hands to keep from bumping into the counter or the table.

Instead, my right hand plunged into something soft and thick. I blinked once more and looked down to see the Doctor sitting at the table and staring up at me with one eyebrow raised. In the next moment, I realised that my hand was on his head, surrounded by thick grey curls.

I retracted my hand and used it to quickly make sure that there weren't any remnants of my earlier tears on my face. "Sorry," I muttered, yawning as soon as the word had left my mouth. My gaze finally focused and I noticed that a steaming mug of dark liquid sat on the table in front of my favourite chair.

"What are you doing awake?" the Doctor asked, shifting in his seat so that he faced the table.

I walked around him and slid into my chair, cupping my hands around the warm mug. I inhaled deeply and almost smiled at the calming scent of tea. "Well apparently you know, don't you?" Lifting the cup to my lips, I watched his eyes soften and dart down to the table, where his hands were clasped together in front of him.

"Well I thought…" The Doctor cleared his throat and swallowed. I could almost see the gears turning in his brain as he carefully picked his words. "I thought that you might be…upset about what happened."

I shivered as the hot, bitter tea made its way down my throat. "Upset is a word for it, yeah." I lifted my feet into my chair, bent my knees, and wrapped my arm around my legs.

He nodded once, pursing his lips. "So you're not…okay, then?"

I grit my teeth against the shout that wanted to erupt from my mouth. _Okay?! I'm about the furthest thing from okay you can get!_

I reminded myself that it wasn't his fault, that he was trying to care, but it didn't change the fact that I was so full of fear and anger that I was ready to snap at any moment.

 _"MERCY!"_ The voice of the Dalek, my voice, echoed in my head. Again I saw the Doctor in front of me, ready to kill. Instinctively I flinched, and I knew it wouldn't escape the Doctor's notice. His eyes widened and he stared at my hand on the table, his fingers twitching.

I didn't have an answer. I wasn't okay, but he knew that.

So we sat in silence, and though the Doctor was sitting right across from me, I had never felt further away from him. There was reserve in his eyes that was new to me. A chill ran down my spine.

"Clara," the Doctor began hesitantly, finally breaking the silence, "I know you were scared…"

 _Tears ran down my cheeks. I tried to remember a time when I had felt this hopeless, this betrayed. I couldn't._

 _I knew that this wasn't the Doctor's fault, but he_ was _the one pointing a gun at me. The anger in his expression, directed toward me, and his voice, so tense and murderous, terrified me. I couldn't believe that the man who had kept me safe from the infinite evils of the universe, my best friend, the one person I trusted over everything else, was about to shoot me down thinking I was a Dalek._

The memory ignited the spark within me and this time I couldn't stop myself from raising my voice. "I wasn't scared, Doctor, I was bloody terrified!" I immediately regretted my outburst of emotion as the Doctor's face fell and, simultaneously, a dull thudding started up in my head.

"I'm sorry." The Doctor looked at me with heavy, morose eyes. "Clara, I'm so sorry, I never meant to-"

As I stared into his pained blue eyes, the Dalek memory began to resurface again. I shifted my gaze to the table. "Don't apologise." I shook my head. "Wasn't your fault."

"Seeing me makes you think about it, doesn't it?"

The guilt in his voice served to make me guilty as well. I didn't want to lie to him, so I couldn't say no. I hated how twisted this all was; that Missy had turned the face I loved the most in the universe into an object of terror.

"Why do you do it?" I asked instead of answering his question.

He raised his eyebrows. "Do what?"

"Keep trusting her, after all she's done to you." _After all she's done to me._

The Doctor looked down at his hands. "It's complicated, Clara. You wouldn't understand-"

 _"Wouldn't understand?_ Because my tiny human brain can't comprehend friendship? That's exactly what _she_ said, Doctor." My fingers began to ache and I realised that I was squeezing the mug as hard as I could. I relaxed my grip and pressed on to the heart of the matter. "If you're lying to me about _her,_ then how can I trust you?"

The Doctor's eyebrows shot up and he stared at me. I wasn't sure what the look in his eyes was; some sort of mix between pain, fear, and regret. _Horror._ As if something he had feared would happen had finally come to pass.

I pressed my lips together and looked down at my tea, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment. The nightmare was still too prevalent in my thoughts. I just needed some time to calm down and some space to think. I couldn't stay here and keep hurting the Doctor when I wasn't really mad at him.

I took another sip of tea. "Can you take me home?" I asked quietly. His expression went rigid, but his eyes remained expressionless. He didn't want me to know what he was feeling. Why?

I wondered, for a moment, if it would be a bad idea to leave him alone.

"Of course," he muttered before I had time to change my mind. He pushed his chair away from the table, dragging it against the tile, and I winced at the loud noise. "Come on." He waved me forward as he walked out of the kitchen.

I set down my mug of tea and followed him, crossing my arms over my chest. Silence reigned as we walked to the console room and he set the TARDIS in motion. An uneasy feeling settled itself in my stomach. It was like some sort of invisible wall had been constructed in between us.

The whining of the TARDIS engines thankfully broke the silence, but it was only a few more seconds before it landed with a thump. I was home…where I would be completely and utterly alone.

The Doctor looked at me and said nothing. I swallowed. "See ya around, then."

"Yeah. See ya." His lips curved upward into a forced half-smile, and a flicker of emotion came into his eyes. I tried to discern what it was, but then he turned his head back toward the console.

I hesitated for a moment, but he clearly wasn't interested in me anymore as he pecked at a keyboard below one of the monitors. With a sigh, I walked out of the TARDIS and stepped into my flat, closing the creaking door behind me.

I looked around at my living room, just the same as I had left it. No matter how long I did it, it was still so strange that I could be faced with certain death at the hands of an alien race and be home again in the next few hours.

But this time I didn't feel quite the same satisfaction that I usually did. It was good to be home, but it was so… _empty._

The TARDIS groaned and whined behind me, fading from existence in a matter of seconds. The Doctor's curious expression came to my mind again, and suddenly I realised the strange emotion I had seen in them.

 _Fear._

* * *

I couldn't sleep.

I had tried drinking some more tea, reading a book, and listening to calming music, but my mind simply refused to succumb to unconsciousness again. Visions of my nightmare still haunted my mind, and now the Doctor's fearful eyes did too. Guilt began to saturate my thoughts. Had _I_ made him so afraid? And of what?

None of my heightened emotions showed any signs of fading, so I lied in my bed wide awake, listening to a piano sonata through earbuds, my mind focusing on everything and nothing at the same time.

I got bored after the third movement of the sonata.

With a sigh I removed the earbuds and bounced off of my bed. My feet landed with a muted thud on the carpet and I didn't waste a moment before marching through my bedroom door. What I intended on doing, I had no idea. Anything but nothing. Anything to distract myself.

But any thought I had vanished at the sight of the blue box in the middle of my living room, as if it had never left. I replayed back the moment when I had stepped out of the TARDIS and distinctly remembered it leaving.

Nevertheless, there it was, light streaming out from the open door. The Doctor was nowhere to be seen, so I wandered inside. The cold metal floor sent a shock through my system, straight from my bare feet to my head. I wrapped my arms around myself and shuddered.

"Doctor?" I called. No reply came. I walked through the console room and stepped into one of the corridors. My next best guess was where our argument had started.

I entered the kitchen for the second time that night, though this time the Doctor was busy at the counter. He poured steaming water from an electric kettle into the mug I had been using earlier.

"Doctor?"

"Hold on, Clara, it's almost done."

I sighed. This time, I knew I wouldn't be able to leave without really talking about what had happened. "Doctor-"

He spun around, mug extended toward me. "Tea?"

With a huff I grabbed the mug and set it down on the counter, its contents sloshing over the rim with the force I had exerted. I turned and wrapped my arms around the Doctor's middle. He stood stiff for a moment, but then pulled me close.

"Doctor." I squeezed him tighter, pressing my head closer to his chest. His heartbeats thumped against my ear, loud and quick.

The Doctor sighed. "Clara Oswald," he murmured. "I'm sorry."

 _The Doctor's expression erupted in fury and he pointed the gun directly at me. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. My mind refused to accept the fact that there was no way out of this, that the Doctor was going to kill me._

My eyes stung with tears. "You don't have to apologise," I whispered in a feeble defense, repeating what I had said earlier.

The Doctor pushed away from the hug and held me at arm's length. "I told you I could see you, that I would always see you, but when it really mattered, I didn't."

 _"Is Clara dead?" the Doctor shouted._

 _I couldn't believe that he was right there, that we were separated only by a metal casing. He had to know it was me. He had to figure it out. He had to see me. "No! Doctor, no! I'm not dead, I'm in here! Can you hear me?"_

 _The Doctor's eyes grew darker as the Dalek voice repeated "I AM A DALEK. I AM A DALEK."_

 _No, no, no. This couldn't be happening. "I'm your friend, I'm your friend!"_

 _Outside, the Dalek voice rose in volume. "I AM YOUR ENEMY, YOUR ENEMY!"_

 _The Doctor backed up a step, his finger on the trigger flexing. His face had "murder" written all over it. He was really going to do it._

 _He couldn't see me._

"No one should ever have to experience what happened to you."

I breathed a shaky sigh and swallowed hard past the lump in my throat. "It wasn't your fault," I said, my voice trembling. "It was Missy."

 _I could see the horror in his eyes. I could see that his mind's eye was playing out what would have happened if I hadn't found the word "mercy." I knew that it would haunt him forever._

 _"I'm sorry, Clara, I'm so sorry."_

The Doctor's eyebrows furrowed when I said her name. His eyes shone with pure hatred. He raised one of his hands and brushed my hair back from my forehead with his thumb, gazing intensely at the spot where I knew the injury was.

"What else did she do to you?"

I sniffed and found more confidence in my voice as I spoke again. "Oh, you know. Hung me upside down, pushed me down a deep, dark hole, used me as Dalek bait." I shrugged. "Nothing out of the ordinary."

The Doctor dropped his hand to his side and curled it into a fist. "I'm sorry."

I shook my head, still staring at his chest. I couldn't quite bring myself to look directly at him. "Don't blame it on yourself."

"Clara Oswald." He said my name so emphatically that I looked into his eyes, the fear that I had seen earlier now saturating his entire expression. "I almost killed you today and you know that."

I winced at the brutally truthful words.

"I shouldn't have even let you come with me," he continued.

A spark of anger erupted inside of me at his statement. I poked a finger at his chest. _"You_ should have told me that you were in trouble." My tears were suddenly long forgotten as I remembered how he had sent his confession dial to _Missy,_ of all people, and hadn't breathed a word to me about thinking that he was going to die. "You couldn't have been sure that Missy was going to find me. Did you think you were just going to go off and die and wait for me to figure it out after you never came back?"

The Doctor's eyes widened and he froze. Clearly, the change in conversation had taken him off guard. But I wasn't done yet.

"And then on Skaro, you almost killed yourself destroying the Daleks. If it weren't for Missy, you would have died."

"I thought you were dead," he replied simply, as if it were the only explanation needed.

 _That's the Doctor without hope,_ I remembered Missy saying.

I shook my head. "That doesn't mean you're allowed to just go kill yourself!"

His eyes softened. He took a step back, now completely backed up against the counter. I knew the Doctor well enough to know that I had hit a nerve.

I crossed my arms over my chest and pressed my lips together, trying to convey a silent question with my expression. _What are you so afraid of?_

I studied his cold blue eyes, now stricken with terror. What in the world could fill the Doctor with so much fear? It wasn't his own life he was fearful for, it was…

"Mine."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows.

"No, hang on. You're…you're scared that I'll…what? Die?"

He paused for a minute, still gazing intensely at me. "I've watched you die sacrificing yourself for me. Twice. I thought that when I found you, the real you, that it would all be over." His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. I couldn't be sure, but I thought his voice trembled just the tiniest bit. "But today I watched you die again. I watched the Daleks surround you and vaporise you into atoms, and there was nothing I could do about it. I didn't know you were really alive, and then I was the one who almost…" His jaw tensed and he looked down. He didn't have to finish the sentence for me to know what he was thinking.

"Hey."

He glanced up at me and I held out my arms.

"One more hug?" I didn't give him a chance to answer before I looped my arms around his neck and hugged him.

"Don't you worry about me, Doctor," I said as he returned the hug. "I'll travel with you forever."

I felt his shoulders tense underneath my arms. A tiny flicker of dread settled somewhere deep inside of me. Somehow, what I had said had only served to make him more afraid.


End file.
